According To Industry Sources, Cyber-Enabled Criminals Are Constantly Inventing New Attack Types
As scammers apply more institutional knowledge of the internet and online user’s behaviors they adapt their tactics. They are not giving up on the old techniques, but expanding to find more ways to scamScam A Scam is a confidence trick - a crime - is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust through deception. Scams or confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, or greed and exploiting that. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men' - criminals) at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". A scam is a crime even if no money was lost. victims – both individuals and corporations – from their money.
Here are the latest types of socially engineered scams running worldwide:
Social Engineering Against All Users
1: Browser Notification Hijack
Web sites have for several years asked visitors to approve “notifications” from the site. We do that on this website, but we use a reliable and secure partner to manage that (specifically OneSignal – an industry leader). Not all websites do use reliable partners – those that try to do it themselves can be vulnerable.
What was once a useful way to engage with readers and keep them up to date can be compromised and turned into a social engineering tool.
These are called push notifications, and they are valuable, but they can be weaponized on poorly managed websites. The problem is that many users blindly click ‘yes’ to allow these notifications. While many users have learned some level of caution with web browsers, the notifications appear more like system messages from the device itself, rather than the browser.
In our case, we offer that choice, but we also allow you to subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t have to use the push notifications- this is a safer alternative for most websites – unless they know what they are doing.
Once the cybercriminal has a user’s consent, they start inundating them with alert messages – and the messages are usually phishing schemes or scam notifications that contain malwareMalware Short for "malicious software," this term means computer viruses and other types of programs that cybercriminals use to disrupt or access your computer, typically with the aim of gathering sensitive files and accounts..
Rule of thumb: if you receive more than a couple of alerts a day – you probably do not want their alerts anyway.
2: Deepfake Recordings
Social engineers are now using deepfakes – very realistic recordings that use artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. Machine learning is a subset of Artificial Intelligence. to simulate a specific person’s appearance or voice – to trick victims into divulging information or performing an action that benefits the scammerScammer A Scammer or Fraudster is someone that engages in deception to obtain money or achieve another objective. They are criminals that attempt to deceive a victim into sending more or performing some other activity that benefits the scammer..
This means they can send better fake videos to victims of romance scams, etc. It also means they can fabricate fake adult intimate videos and photos for sextortion purposes with ease.
Audio deepfakes – in which the cybercriminal uses a “cloned” voice that is nearly indistinguishable from a real person’s voice to create a scam audio recording – are a real growing concern.
One of the earliest successful examples came in 2019, when a fake recording of a CEO’s voice was used to instruct an employee to immediately transfer money to an international account. The recording was left as a voicemail to the subordinate, who obeyed the fraudulent instructions and sent $243,000 to the attackers.
We are seeing criminals use deepfake recordings to company manipulate staff into sending money or offering up private information – only audio recordings so far, but Gerchow believes video deepfakes are just a matter of time. But these are also being used in other kinds of scams, such as romance scams.
Everyone needs to become much smarter and more knowledgeable fast.
3: Malicious QR Codes
QR code-related phishing fraudFraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain (money or other assets), or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensation) or criminal law (e.g., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities), or it may cause no loss of money, property, or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, for example by obtaining a passport, travel document, or driver's license, or mortgage fraud, where the perpetrator may attempt to qualify for a mortgage by way of false statements. A fraud can also be a hoax, which is a distinct concept that involves deliberate deception without the intention of gain or of materially damaging or depriving a victim. has become common in the last year.
QR codes – those machine-readable, black-and-white matrix codes arranged in a square – have become an increasingly popular way for companies to engage with consumers and deliver services in the midst of COVID-19. For example, many restaurants have ditched paper menus, and instead, allow patrons to scan a QR code with their smartphone. Similarly, many Girl Scouts posted QR codes for no-contact ordering and delivery of cookies this spring.
Here is the problem – you cannot see what web address the QR Code contains just by looking at it!
Many of the websites that QR codes send people to are operated by third-party vendors. When scanned, a malicious QR code can connect phones to a malicious destination – just like clicking on a bad link. Same concept; new wrapper.
QR Codes that appear on ads or other marketing material can offer everything from a menu, to access to a website, to a chance of winning an Xbox. Always look for a real web address and always be cautious. Only trust reliable sources.
4: Text fraud
Text messages have been a conduit for social engineering scams for a while, but texting tactics becoming very common and frequent.
A large portion of the population prefers communicating via text messages as opposed to the phone. People are now extremely used to communicating very confidential types of information via text and it comes with risks.
Because grocery and food delivery has grown in the last year, delivery-related scam texts are up. Other common lures include texts that promise information about COVID stimulus checks that link victims back to a website that looks like the IRSIRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue & tax service of the United States federal government responsible for collecting taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code (the main body of federal statutory tax law.) It is part of the Department of the Treasury and led by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The duties of the IRS include providing tax assistance to taxpayers; pursuing and resolving instances of erroneous or fraudulent tax filings; and overseeing various benefits programs. Visit www.IRS.gov to learn more. site and asks for sensitive personal information, such as a birth date and social security number.
If you get a questionable text, look at the sending number – have you seen it before? Do a quick search online and see what shows.
As with QR codes, victims simply have not developed the level of awareness and caution needed.
5: Typo-squatting or Lookalike Domains
This is actually not new but has become more sinister in the last year.
A Typo Domain uses common misspellings of a domain name that many people would naturally make. Mostly these have been used to gain ad exposures from people carelessly typing a web address. But increasingly they are used to fool victims in email addresses, or in directing unsuspecting victims to fake or malicious websites.
For example: think Gooogle instead of Google, or by adding a different top-level domain (.uk instead of .co.uk). Unlike the often sloppy versions from earlier days, today these sites may feature sophisticated designs, carefully detailed mimicry of legitimate sites, and sophisticated functionality.
Lookalike domains – are often served up in a business email compromise (BEC) attack. Fraudsters impersonate legitimate domains in order to fool victims into thinking they are in a safe location or that an email is legitimate.
We saw an example of this from a scammer in Australia that used the name of a government anti-scam agency called “ScamWatch” in a domain name to fool scam victims into believing they were dealing with the government investigators. They were asked to pay an investigation fee. SCARS has it shut down in 2019, but criminals persist in creating fake businesses.
A perfect example – can you see what is wrong in this web address?
Typo-Domains – A Kind of Social Engineering Attack
Social engineering victims are usually tricked into either feeling psychological safety by their choice or into seeking psychological safety in a way that will play into a criminalCriminal A criminal is any person who through a decision or act engages in a crime. This can be complicated, as many people break laws unknowingly, however, in our context, it is a person who makes a decision to engage in unlawful acts or to place themselves with others who do this. A criminal always has the ability to decide not to break the law, or if they initially engage in crime to stop doing it, but instead continues.’s hands.
Criminals set up these sites not only to deliver malware but also to capture credit card information or other sensitive data through fake login fields or other fake forms.
Social Engineering Against Businesses
1: Supply Chain Partner ImpersonationImpersonation An impersonator is someone who imitates or copies the behavior or actions of another. There are many reasons for impersonating someone, such as: part of a criminal act such as identity theft, online impersonation scam, or other fraud. This is usually where the criminal is trying to assume the identity of another, in order to commit fraud, such as accessing confidential information or to gain property not belonging to them. Also known as social engineering and impostors.
Attacks that exploit parts of an organization’s supply chain are now a big problem. This is basically a variation of BEC scams, but scammers now have more than enough money to understand real business processes.
It’s not easy to defend what you can’t see, and you are only as strong as the weakest link. For example, there have been many targeted emails coming in that look like they are from your trusted partners but are in fact bad actors posing as employees you may know within your network.
Always verify, verify, verify. Create a new email from the address in your contact list, or through your connection on LinkedIn. Do not just reply to a message you receive.
These attacks have become even more detailed and sophisticated over time. They will look and sound good.
We see these long, sophisticated attempts to build trust or relationships with a company’s outbound-facing teams whose entire job is to help.
By establishing these trusted relationships, the criminals’ ultimate goal is to make standard social engineering tactics more effective, eliciting help in bypassing security controls, or sending malware or gaining information that will compromise the target company’s systems.
The SolarWinds attack is an example of a supply chain attack – in that case, a specific version called a vendor email compromise attack (VEC) was used. As SolarWinds officials noted, an email account was compromised and used to programmatically access accounts of targeted SolarWinds personnel in business and technical roles.
2: Collaboration Scams
With this social engineering tactic, cybercriminals target professionals in collaborative fields, including designers, developers, and even security researchers. The lure is an invitation that asks them to collaborate on work via an app or website.
Recent pandemic lockdowns and expanded work-from-home increased people’s comfort with remote collaboration, so this tactic fit the times well.
The cybercriminal sends over a Visual Studio Project containing malicious code. The user runs the program, and their device is infected pretty quickly. This attack essentially exploits the desire or need to assist or help others with passion projects.
Obviously, you should never accept or open an email or other attachments from people that you do not know! And never run anything that can be executed on your computer.
These attacks are often well-crafted, showing great attention to detail – but especially for people that live on the web – they should know better!
Criminals posed as active researchers and built social proof documents – with apparent third parties validating their research – using a blog including articles from industry sources as ‘guest posts,’ Twitter accounts, YouTube videos, LinkedIn, Discord, and more, A suspicious victim may be put at ease by this seemingly wide social footprint. But like all things online, don’t trust anyone!
If someone wants to participate in research then do it through a known channel such as RsearchGate.
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SCARS GREEN BOOK
Self-Help Self-Paced Recovery Program Guide
LEARN HOW TO RECOVER ON YOUR OWN
This program is designed to help scam victims struggling to recover on their own and for those who want to understand the overall process. You can be using other resources, such as traumaTrauma Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless in a dangerous world. Psychological trauma can leave you struggling with upsetting emotions, memories, and anxiety that won’t go away. It can also leave you feeling numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety or other emotional shocks, but any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and isolated can result in trauma, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It’s not the objective circumstances that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatized. Trauma requires treatment, either through counseling or therapy or through trauma-oriented support programs, such as those offered by SCARS. counselingCounseling Counseling is the professional guidance of the individual by utilizing psychological methods especially in collecting case history data, using various techniques of the personal interview, and testing interests and aptitudes. A mental health counselor (MHC), or counselor, is a person who works with individuals and groups to promote optimum mental and emotional health. Such persons may help individuals deal with issues associated with addiction and substance abuse; family, parenting, and marital problems; stress management; self-esteem; and aging. They may also work with "Social Workers", "Psychiatrists", and "Psychologists". SCARS does not provide mental health counseling. or therapy, qualified support groupsSupport Groups In a support group, members provide each other with various types of help, usually nonprofessional and nonmaterial, for a particular shared, usually burdensome, characteristic, such as romance scams. Members with the same issues can come together for sharing coping strategies, to feel more empowered and for a sense of community. The help may take the form of providing and evaluating relevant information, relating personal experiences, listening to and accepting others' experiences, providing sympathetic understanding and establishing social networks. A support group may also work to inform the public or engage in advocacy. They can be supervised or not. SCARS support groups are moderated by the SCARS Team and or volunteers., or completely independent – on your own!
The SCARS Steps program is a complete program and is provided for the purpose of helping scam victims to overcome this experience. Throughout this SCARS Steps Program, we speak about issues and challenges that a victim may have and help guide them through their recovery. But each person is different and it is important to understand your own reasons for being vulnerable to being scammed.
After the trauma of being scammed, you need to take steps to recover and move on. This may be an alternative to counseling in the short term, but we still encourage you to seek out professional help & support. Throughout this SCARS Steps Program, we speak about issues, challenges, defects, or problems that a victim may have in a generalized way.
The SCARS GREEN BOOK will help you recover from your scam offline and it will always be there when you need it!
SCARS SLATE BOOK – Let Us Explain What Happened!
A Guide For Families & Friends Of Scam Victims
HOW TO HELP ROMANCE SCAM VICTIMS FOR FAMILIES & FRIENDS OF SCAM VICTIMS
This SCARS Publishing book represents a complete guide to help the families and friends understand how these scams work and how to help the victim.
The SCARS Slate Book should be purchased by family and friends to better understand what happened to the victim and the traumatic impact on them. But it can also be shared by the victim so that they do not have to explain to family and friends about the scam. This publication is to help others to help Scam Victims to make it through this traumatic experience and recover.
Each person is different and it is important to understand how relationship scamsRelationship Scam A Relationship Scam is a one-to-one criminal act that involves a trust relationship and uses deception & manipulation to get a victim to give to the criminal something of value, such as money! Click here to learn more: What Is A Relationship Scam? work and why people are vulnerable; to being scammed, how they were lured in, then groomed and manipulated. This understanding is essential in helping them through the process of ending the scam and then on to recovery. The SCARS Slate Book will provide the information necessary to help support a victim through this process.
SCARS RED BOOK
Your Personal Scam Evidence & Crime Record Organizer
ORGANIZE YOUR INFORMATION TO MAKE THE REPORTING PROCESS SIMPLE!
Helps you get and stay organized. This publication is to help Scam Victims organize their crime information. Complete this information before reporting to the police then bring this book with you
Before or after reporting to the police the RED BOOK gives you a dedicated tool to record all the essential facts of this crime. The Victim, the Scammers, the Money, and your Police interactions. Everything that really matters can be easily recorded for your immediate use and for the future!
As we have seen, money recovery/repayment programs can become available years after the scam ends and you need to keep all the details of this crime in case it is needed. We have also seen scammers being extradited to the U.S. and other countries, this will help in the event you testify or give statements, Additionally, this helps you have your information ready to qualify for victims’ benefits, compensation, or aid.
The Official SCARS RED BOOK is your way of recording all the important facts of this crime so that you do not lose essential information, Complete the RED BOOK then put it away with the confidence that you will have it if or when it is needed.
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